Talk:Penpal/@comment-24269673-20131209040638
This story have almost brought me to tears. Honestly. Sad and creepy, made me remember my insipid childhood. This is truly well-written for an amateur Reddit writer (although there are some flaws), the character construction was really fine: I could feel the mother's angst at the narrator's puerile obliviousness just as I could feel the butterflies in my stomach like I was one of the children, ready for some new adventure in the woods. Josh's card with "I Love You" printed on it left me heartbroken, just as "We were friends" as final phrase. Did someone else here besides me remembered of "Bridge to Terabithia"? I mean, Penpal is like it's darker and horror-infused cousin. "Mysterious Skin" influences, although less noticeable, are also worth of being remarked. I'd also compare this pasta to a lonely Silent Hill game on a shelf amongst lots of Resident Evil games. As the later, many of the pastas in this site appeal to obvious gore and horror cliches, while this one setted mood on relationships between characters and subjetive sensations of fear, love, mystery, sadness and pain as the former. (Attention: I'm not saying this pasta is as nearly as good as SH/RE franchises: it's just a comparision on the different aproaches the pastas usually take.) However, nothing on Earth is perfect. I've found some points that made me a little bit unconfortable while reading it. Below: 1 - Mrs. Maggie presence was irrelevent, even I knowning that all this was done to set a mood on suspicions of she being the stalker or related to him. Anyway, I liked the way her death was cited. 2 - How the hell could the stalker lock himself with Josh, a pubescent boy, inside a 7 feet long coffin and BURY THEMSELVES deep under the ground without anyone ever noticing this?!! Also, wouldn't it be more clever of Josh's father to first check the holes to see if there wasn't any person or animal there? Poor explanation. 3 - According to the story, Josh and the man were killed when both the boys were about 12/13 years old. The narrator's encounter with Veronica, 2 or 3 years later, her subsequent murder apparently commited by the same man and, afterwards, the narrator once again being stalked with photos and fake replies are facts that left a huge Continuinity Error in the story as whole. 4 - If all the time the narrator was the one who was being stalked, photographed, kidnaped and so on, why the fuck did the stalker simply gave up on him and decided to kill his best friend and his best friend's sister? Wouldn't it be easier for the man, being big and strong as narrated, to kill the narrator's mother and kidnap the child to do whatever the wanted to? 5 - Boxes being left all alone (to not ever being found) in the narrator's old house, with his meows being heard through the walkie-talkie was such a cruel scene! This is not necessarily a bad thing, I liked it but, dunno, I felt I needed to express my agony and pity on the poor animal's abandonment. 6 - I know the narrator's mother wanted to protect him with all her forces but isn't it a little bit too insane for her to have kept all this SERIOUS secrets hidden even knowing that calling the police and/or warning her son and everyone else around (neighbours, Josh's parents, relatives, etc) would be more safe?! Also, how did she suddenly know who the stalker was? Nonetheless, as someone suggested in the other comments, it would be a cleverer escape to the story if the stalker was, after all, the narrator's long vanished manic father. 7 - The story left huge loose ends and, also, it ended abruptly. The scene of Josh's father finding the corpses was bizarre. Why would he call the narrator's mother instead of the police? Not to say their unnecessary and overly dramatical dialogue. 8 - Aren't the children too underaged for all those things they did? I mean, they were WAY too clever and skilled for children who were in Kindergarten (!!!) and the first grades of Elementary School. Their language and way of talking to each other is not much credible as well. This whole story would fit better and be more realistic if the boys had around their 12~15 years old through the story. 5~11 years old is, IMO, waaaaay too young. After all this long text I wrote, I deeply feel that, unhappily, my review on this very pleasant piece of contemporary internet literature may never reach the author. For all the nostalgic, sad and lovable emotions and feels I had while reading the story, but nevertheless considering it's undeniable and numerous flaws, I'll give it a 2.5 stars out of 5. Worth reading, the author has great potential, but buying this book on Amazon would be really silly and money-wasting.